Flashpoint sts-11

by Keith Douglass

“Yes, tall friend, we have a glitch. State is all over us like a clawing tiger. They’ve been getting flack from Colombia for two days about incursions, invasions, air attacks, and acts of war. State has tromped on our toes and ordered the CNO not to allow any more air incursions of Colombia.”

  “No chopper pickup? Come on, Stroh, you’re hanging us out to dry again.”

  “Hell, not me, it’s the State Department and the President.”

  “They invaded us first, the embassy. Damn. You expect us to walk out?”

  “It’s only sixty miles.”

  “Oh, yeah, and across a range of mountains that make the Rockies look like anthills.”

  Murdock saw the SEALs crowding around, listening to the speaker on the SATCOM and his talk.

  “No suggestions, Mister Christian in Action Guy?” Murdock asked.

  “Steal a chopper and fly it out?”

  “I’m not checked out to fly a chopper or anything else.”

  Murdock turned off the handset and stared at the radio. The speaker came on.

  “Do the best we can to get the order lifted. Might take a day or two. Be ready to receive daytime at noon, three and six.”

  “If that’s the best you can do.”

  Jaybird pushed through the men to the front. “Hey, Commander, we’ve got four DC-3 types out front. Why not steal one of those?”

  “Can you fly one?” DeWitt asked.

  “No.”

  “As I remembered your files, none of our men has a ticket to fly a DC-3 or any other aircraft,” DeWitt said.

  Murdock began to grin. “We can’t fly them, but someone over there at the airfield sure as shit can. We don’t blow up those craft, we move in and capture them and a pilot. We blow away a few of them until one says he’ll fly us out rather than get his head shot off.”

  Jaybird let out a short cheer. “Damn, I’m good. I knew we had to steal one of those gooneys. So I forgot about a pilot.”

  The tactical plans changed. The SEALs came up on three sides of the administration building. It was medium-sized, and Murdock hoped it also housed the pilots. They went in silently. One guard on duty had fallen asleep. He would never wake up. They found the office, a records area, then a hall with a dozen doors. Lam listened to three of them and heard snoring at the last one. He tried the handle. The door was not locked.

  Murdock went in with his NVGs on. Two men in a two-bed room. Both had pictures on the wall. Each showed a man beside a plane. Murdock clamped his hand over the first man’s mouth and shook him awake. He pulled the man out of his bed. He wore shorts and a T-shirt. Murdock propelled him into the hall.

  Ken Ching was there and questioned him in Spanish.

  “We won’t kill you if you stay quiet and answer our questions, all right?”

  The Colombian nodded.

  “Are you a pilot?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you fly the twin-engine transport outside?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it fueled and ready to fly?”

  “Yes, all fueled full.”

  “Is the plane loaded or empty?”

  “Empty, to be loaded tomorrow.”

  Ching told Murdock the gist of the talk, and they hustled the pilot outside. It took five minutes for the pilot to go through his preflight check. As he did, the SEALs examined the interior. It was set up to haul packaged cocaine in liters, but there was plenty of room on the floor for fifteen SEALs.

  Canzoneri used the last of his TNAZ and C-4 and planted bombs in the three other transports, the two small planes, and three trucks.

  “Ready to activate the timers when you are, Commander,” Canzoneri said.

  Murdock put all the men on board, told Canzoneri to set the detonators for ten minutes, and race back on board.

  Ching held an MP-5 submachine gun on the pilot as he slid into the cockpit seat.

  “When I tell you to, you start the engines, and at once taxi away from these buildings. You do it damn fast, understand?” Ching told the pilot. “Any problem, and you’re dead where you sit.” The Colombian had been sweating profusely since he was jerked out of his room. Now rivelets of sweat worked down his cheeks.

  “All on board,” Murdock bellowed as he closed the door and pushed the locking arm in place.

  “Vámonos,” Ching said, and the pilot started the engines and almost at once began to taxi away. Behind them lights snapped on in the main building. Men ran out in their underwear, carrying long guns.

  “Faster!” Ching told the pilot in Spanish.

  They raced down the runaway, and Ching ducked as a bullet slammed through the cockpit side glass and buried itself in the roof. They kept rolling.

  “Get us out of here,” Ching’s radio spoke. “We’re taking rounds through the fuselage back here.”

  “Faster,” Ching yelled in Spanish. There was no wind. They could take off in this direction. Ching watched the ground speed. He didn’t know what speed the ship needed to get airborne. At last the plane shuddered, then lifted gently from the ground and turned at once to the left and climbed.

  The pilot looked at Ching and nodded.

  “We’re in the air,” he said in Spanish. “But we took a lot of rounds. The flaps don’t respond. I’m not sure I can fly this machine very far.”

  “All you have to do is get us to the coast. Set a course due west.”

  The pilot looked alarmed. “That means going over the Montes de Maria. They are over ten thousand feet high.”

  “Ceiling on this crate is much higher than that,” Ching said, hoping he was right. “We can get over them easy.”

  He switched to English on his radio. “Murdock, we have a small problem up here.”

  The platoon leader came into the cabin with a question on his face.

  “Pedro here says we have to go over the mountains, something Maria to the west. Up to ten thousand feet. He’s not sure if he can make it.”

  The right engine sputtered, almost died, then caught again. The pilot pointed to one of the fuel gauges and yelled in Spanish.

  “He says the tank was full, now it’s half empty. They must have hit the fuel tank with the rifle fire.”

  25

  Airborne Over Central Colombia

  Murdock looked at the fuel gauge. It was at the halfway level. The pilot could be lying.

  “Ask him how far he can go on the fuel he has left,” the platoon leader said.

  Ching asked the pilot in Spanish.

  “He says he isn’t sure, twenty miles, maybe more.”

  “Fine. Tell him to head directly at the mountains. He must know of a pass through them that’s less than the height of the tallest peaks. These aren’t supposed to be the highest in the country. Tell him if he can’t get over the mountains, we’re going to crash into them.”

  Murdock listened and watched the expression of the pilot as Ching talked to him in Spanish. He was not an actor. What he felt showed at once. First it was stark fear, then the idea of the pass came, and he relaxed a little.

  “The bastard was faking the fuel. Now, get out your MP-5 and hold it on him all the time. Tell him if he does anything wrong, he dies. Remind him we have two men who can fly the plane in case he comes up with a dozen rounds in his black heart.”

  The pilot had turned pale by the time Ching finished the small tirade at the man. He began sweating again. He looked at Ching, then at the submachine gun, and nodded.

  “Sí, sí. Paso, paso.” He struggled then but said in English. “I know mountain pass. Maybe get through. Plane old, tired.”

  Murdock relaxed a little. There was a chance they just might make it over the hump. The mountains were nearer the coast than to Plato. Once over the mountains, they would have a chance to get to the coast.

  Murdock could feel the plane climbing, not sharply but probably as steep as the old engines could go. The plane could have been built back in the 1950s or before then. The DC-3 was a workhorse, but even horses have to be shot at some point and put out of their mis
ery. He hoped it wasn’t misery day for this old DC-3.

  The climb continued. Murdock caught his men up to date on the cockpit talk.

  “So, if he can make the pass over the mountains, it will cut down the altitude needed. This old bird isn’t exactly a spring chicken looking to cackle.”

  “This is the same bird the Air Force used to call the C-47,” Jaybird said. “First ones came out in 1935. Let’s hope this one was built a hell of a lot later than that. They should have a top cruising speed of a hundred and eighty-five miles an hour, so it shouldn’t take long to get thirty or forty miles to those mountains.”

  They looked out the small windows but came up with nothing but blackness.

  “We’ve been in the air for fourteen minutes,” Canzoneri said. “Stopwatch counts up as well as down,” he said before any challenged him.

  Murdock went back to the small cockpit. Ahead, he could see a few lights sprinkling the ground.

  “He says it’s a small village, and the road leads sharply west into the only pass he knows of. He drove over it once and it was over twenty-seven hundred meters. That would be about eight thousand feet.”

  “I’d feel better if those mountain folks were much farther below us,” Murdock said. “Now I wish we had our chutes.”

  “Everyone else had the same idea,” Ching said. He turned and jabbered something to the pilot. The man nodded.

  “Just reminded him that he lives or dies by getting us through that fucking pass. He gets the idea.”

  Murdock thought of trying the SATCOM. He wasn’t sure they could hold a satellite with their antenna as they were flying. They’d never tired that before. He really didn’t have anything to tell Stroh or the Navy. When they got down, if they could, he’d yell and scream at the CIA asshole. How could they hang the whole platoon out in the wilderness this way with every chance they would get their balls shot off?

  The pilot yelled something.

  “He says the pass is right ahead. He’s been following the headlights of a few cars. He figures we need another three hundred feet altitude.”

  “Tell him to circle around until he gets the vertical feet that he needs,” Murdock said.

  The pilot frowned when he heard the orders. He shrugged and pulled the aircraft in a half-mile-wide circle, climbing as fast as the old engines would permit.

  They made six circles, and Chin yelled at the pilot. “Nobody is coming to help you. We have the altitude, we’re at almost 8500 feet if you set your altimeter right.” He shouted it in Spanish at the man. “Now, get us over these mother fucking mountains or your ass is stretched and blasted and cut in half with nine-millimeter rounds. Does that sound good?”

  The pilot wiped his dripping eyebrows, glanced at Ching and his leveled submachine gun, then stared straight ahead. He pulled the bird out of the circle and angled slightly to the northwest.

  Ching looked out the cockpit window on his side, and he could see the loose string of lights below. Then a few miles to the side, he saw the pattern of streetlights that lit up a small subdivision of houses. No mistaking it.

  He grabbed the pilot by the throat. “Are we heading west? What’s a housing project doing up here on the mountain?”

  Ching had screeched it in Spanish. The pilot pawed at his throat. The plane took a steep turn to the left. Ching let go of the pilot, who righted the plane.

  “Yes, big government project. Need many men, so build houses. Mountains here. Look at compass. West.” Ching looked closer at the floating compass and saw that the heading was generally west.

  “The pass, can you find it?”

  “Yes, ahead, three miles. Almost high enough. More power and maybe get over.”

  “Damn well better, or like I say, you die first, in the air, not in a crash.” Ching clicked the safety on and off on the MP-5 sub gun and pushed the muzzle into the Colombian’s side.

  “Now fly us the fuck over this mountain.”

  Murdock watched the small drama play out. Ching was handling it perfectly. No chance to fake it on the pilot’s part. If he did, he was dead meat. So were the rest of them in the plane, but he didn’t know that.

  Murdock looked out the window at the dark shadows ahead. The mountain or clouds? No clouds out tonight. It was solid Colombian soil, rock, and trees.

  “Get us higher,” Ching shouted.

  The pilot grimaced and pulled the controls back a little more. The throttle was on maximum.

  Murdock watched the mountain come closer. He could see the headlights crawling along below. Then all at once he realized the headlights were no more than a hundred feet below them. They were almost on top of the road. Now he could see the opening where the road went. It was a good three or four hundred feet below the peaks on both sides. Plenty of room for the wingspan of the old DC-3.

  The sudden rumbling of the air and the screaming roar of a plane overhead slammed into the transport and made it veer to the left. The pilot swore and pulled the ship back on course.

  “Fighter overhead,” Murdock said. “He knows we’re here, he’s probably asking for permission to shoot us down.”

  “What was it, a MiG?”

  “Heard they had a few.”

  “Yes!” the pilot shouted. Murdock looked out the cockpit windows to the front and couldn’t see the mountain.

  They were over it, through the pass.

  “Now, get as low as you can go,” Ching said. “We want to be right on the treetops all the way to the coast. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, but not too low. Some small mountains out front. Lower, but not good to crash into.”

  “Was that a MiG jet fighter that buzzed us?” Ching asked the pilot.

  “Oh, yes, my country has twelve now. And twelve pilots to fly them.”

  Ching checked the fuel gauges. One for each engine. He saw the one on the right was down to a quarter of a tank. That was the one he figured took a rifle round. The other one had the needle hitting the red line of empty.

  “Fuel!” Ching brayed.

  The pilot checked the gauges. He swore in Spanish before he looked at Ching. “One engine quit in two, three minutes. Fly some with one engine, not far.”

  “Find us a place to land,” Ching said. “We’ll belly land it with the wheels up. You understand?”

  Sweat poured down the pilot’s face again.

  “Yes, long valley, maybe with grass.”

  “Good,” Murdock said. “Can you find one in the dark?”

  The pilot grinned, suddenly the man in control. “Yes, have flown this way before. Another five miles or so. Long valley, much farmers there.”

  Murdock wondered about the farming fields. There weren’t a lot of options. He went to the cabin and told the men they would be making a belly landing without wheels.

  “When I give the word, hold onto something. Brace against something forward because that’s the way you’ll be pushed as the bucket here stops suddenly.”

  “Just not too suddenly,” Jaybird cracked.

  Murdock went back to the cockpit. He saw that the pilot had slowed the airspeed and was turning to his left. Then he saw it out the window in the moonlight. An open valley maybe five miles long.

  A few lights showed at the sides of the valley.

  “No chance go around for second try,” the pilot said. “First time. Slow as much as possible.”

  They came in over the valley, in a steep glide, then leveled out twenty feet over the ground. All Murdock could see were a few fences and land plots, and then a field filled with bales of hay. He couldn’t see directly below, but they must be within fifty feet of touching down.

  The pilot yelped and nosed the plane down sharper, then brought up the nose and flared out as he waited for the plane to stall out just before it touched.

  The nose dropped a foot, then the whole transport eased to the ground and skidded along.

  Murdock had glued himself to the forward cabin door and held on. Ching had strapped himself in the copilot’s seat and had both feet
on the instrument panel.

  The plane jolted forward, rumbling and groaning. Murdock felt himself slammed against the door frame as the rig hit something that slowed it even more. Then it skidded again and slowed more and more.

  Twenty long seconds later, it came to a stop.

  “Open the hatch, everyone out,” Murdock bellowed in the sudden silence. Both engines had shut down. Murdock ran into the cabin. The men were jostled about, but none looked broken up.

  Ed DeWitt rammed open the side hatch and dropped to the ground.

  “Out, out, out,” Murdock roared. “This thing could explode at any minute.”

  The SEALs stormed out, most leaving their equipment behind. Murdock pushed the pilot out and was the last man to clear the aircraft.

  DeWitt came up to him, grinning.

  “Lucky bastards. He set us down in a field of just-mown hay. Not raked or baled. The cut hay made a perfect slide for us. A plowed field could have killed us all.”

  Murdock saw the cut weeds and hay. The plane would never be able to take off.

  “Anybody hurt? Casualty report, Alpha.” His men all reported in. DeWitt made a check. His men were all in good shape.

  “Let’s get any gear out of the aircraft we left there. We just might need it before we get to the coast.” He frowned. “What the hell ever happened to that barracks bag full of hundred dollar bills? Jefferson, that was your eight million dollar baby. Where is it?”

  “Cap, it was too fucking heavy. We split up the cash. Every man ’cept you and JG got some bundles.”

  “I’m a rich son of a bitch,” Franklin crooned.

  They pulled weapons and two drag bags from the plane and then hunkered down, waiting for the decision where to go. Murdock checked his wrist compass. “Due west leads over that little hill. Anybody have any MREs left?”

  “Hell, they been gone for a day or more,” Ronson said. “Damn flight attendant on this bucket didn’t even give us breakfast.”

  Murdock and Ching talked with the pilot.

  “Where do the farmers live who work the land?” Ching asked.

  “Small village, far end of valley. Two miles.”

  “We need some food,” Murdock said. The pilot nodded.